Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Zoey has two boyfriends. She plays with them every day, even on the days they call her Toot Girl. She says she is going to marry them, both of them, mainly because they don’t have booger noses. I do not know their intentions. (Zoey has girlfriends, too, but somehow they don’t merit as much conversation at the dinner table. For instance, I have no idea of the state of their snot. And she is not planning on marrying any of them. Which makes me wonder if she is going to grow up more of a guys’ girl, you know the kind? Because me? I’ve always been more of a girls’ girl. That kind.)

Men may be from Mars and women may be from Venus, but both are still planets about which I know little. (I’m thinking in this silly interplanetary metaphor we are each of us our own sun). Much has been made of figuring out the opposite sex, but what of figuring out your own? Sometimes I think that is more important, Venus a “sister planet” due to similar size, gravity and bulk composition yet completely unlivable due to hostile conditions.

I have been the girl who hates the other girl for sleeping with her boyfriend. Fucking bitch whore slut with scant mention made to the boy who made it all possible. And I have been the other girl, too. I have had girl crushes and been crushed on, felt as if I were the prettiest girl in the room only to feel the very next day as if I am the toadiest, awfulest, most boringest girl ever. I have forged friendships and fed them grapes, let some hang like yellow leaves, lazily let others fall when I never meant it. I have broken up with friends, and looking back those were more painful than breakups with boys, a misunderstanding between girls such a deep betrayal of similar size, gravity and dense composition of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Honestly, somewhere along the way I bet some boy has called me Toot Girl, though of course I don’t remember it. But I can still recite the letter that a girl handed me when I was 15 and had made out with her boyfriend the weekend before, how she and her friends came into the TCBY where I worked and ordered an extra large swirl only to smear it across the table and onto the walls as I watched from behind the counter. I guess I want Zoey to know as much about girls as she does about boys, though what I can teach her is not much. We have sent rovers to Mars and found water, gotten so excited about the possibility of life not to mention the countless nights spent analyzing boys, whatwherewhy, the apparent magnitude of the red planet measuring -3.0, a brightness surpassed only by Venus, your girlfriends, and then the sun.

First, let me say that I heart your blog so very very very much. Second, this post appeared as if you'd read my mind. My girlfriend (who just attended her 10th high school reunion) and I were just speaking of this very subject on our lunch hour today. That you for perfectly phrasing what we were trying to find words for!

Whether Zoe turns out to be a boy's girl or a girl's girl, I can't agree with you about what you said that there's little you can teach her. Just with the way you write about it on you blog, I am sure she has a wonderful teacher by her side, and whatever way she decides to go, many wonderful things are coming her way.

Hi, my name is Susannah and I like shiny things, nutella, a good pen and the feel of sunshine warm and flat on my back. I like my family. Scratch that, I love them: my childhood sweetheart turned adulthood husband Bryan, my head-butting abyssinian named Nacho, and my sweet Petunia Faced kids, Zoey and Ozzy. This is my life, my askew view of this absurd world, my truth in a world splintered with 'em. This is my blog.

I write for love but money works, too. Email me for more info, or just to say hello.
susannah.ink@gmail.com